APK Size is doubled

[seriiix]

🐛 Bug Report

The APK size is almost doubled in RN 58. In RN 57 the release build of the app was about ~8mb. Now it's ~16mb.

To Reproduce

Create a new project with react-native init and then generate a signed APK using this.

Expected Behavior

~8mb APK size.

Environment

React Native Environment Info:
System:
OS: Windows 10
CPU: (4) x64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU 760 @ 2.80GHz
Memory: 1.58 GB / 7.99 GB
Binaries:
Yarn: 1.13.0 - C:\Program Files (x86)\Yarn\bin\yarn.CMD
npm: 6.4.1 - C:\Program Files\nodejs\npm.CMD
IDEs:
Android Studio: Version 3.2.0.0 AI-181.5540.7.32.5014246

[zenz]

is that because 0.58 support arm64-v8a?
try to remove arm64-v8a support in build.gradle and compile your project again to see the result?

[creambyemute]

Was the JSC updated on Android? That'd increase the appSize by ~4mb even with abi splitting.

2x 4 = 8mb increase in universal apk I'd guess.

[darekg11]

@creambyemute This is the MB growth in my case, RN 0.57.8 app size was around 12.5MB and in 0.58.4 it is at around 20MB

[erennyuksell]

it's about using JSC

[radeno]

If you can use Android App Bundle.
Its extract every platform from APK and user just download what is needed by platform (ARM/X86 32/64bit) and display resolution.

[darekg11]

Well, it's not really a bug then. Should this be an issue at all?

[radeno]

@darekg11 it is not issue. RN 0.58 adds support for ARM v8. RN 0.59 adding x86_64.
By gradle tools 3.2 (what is default in RN 0.58) is supported new Android App bundling.
In final our new production app based on RN 0.58 is slimmer than on RN 0.57.

[elMuso]

Damn i was wondering why the debug apk was <13 mb since when i used RN 0.56 it was 6 mb.. 6 MB! . I guess its time to generate separate apk files for google play . This should be somewhere in the docs. It was driving me insane, i thought it was my build tools version

[radeno]

Just choose this. It is not APK anymore. But .aab

EDIT:

Google Play console must have App key signing enabled.

[dxhung87]

I create a new project with react-native init (RN 0.59) and then generate a signed APK. The APK size is ~30MB what happend??

[radeno]

APK always contains support for 3 platforms (ARM, ARM64, X86, X86_64 is not bundled for 0.59.0) and includes new JSC (javascript core). Use AAP (Android App Bundle).

It is not a bug.

[darekg11]

This is because of JavaScript Core update.
Just change:
def enableSeparateBuildPerCPUArchitecture = false to def enableSeparateBuildPerCPUArchitecture = true in your android/app/build.gradle so APK file will be splitted per architecture resulting in smaller APK files that all should be updated to Google Play and Store will automatically pick up the correct version for user.